Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Here's a movie about writing that I'd heard much to get excited about. It uses real poetry from Ron Padgett, a poet whose poetry can be fun, and it was supposed to be realistic about the writing life and poetry.

Most of the drama gets buried or is held out of view. Sometimes a glimmer of what may be the conflict arises, but it's a red herring. The poet's partner gets involved in projects: first, decorating (house, apparel); then cupcakes; then guitars. Is the conflict going to be her revolving, sometimes costly interests? In a word: No. The bus breaks down, and everyone mills around waiting for the next bus. Are we going to see how miserable life can be as a laborer of the lower class and everyone feels obligated to complain to/at you? No. A group of gangsta guys warns Paterson his dog might get stolen. Was that a foreshadowing or a warning of what those guys planned to do? No. His girlfriend warns him his poetry might get lost; he should make copies. Seventy percent into the movie, a gun is drawn (the guy's girlfriend doesn't act scared--she seems more dubious). Is that it? Is that the central conflict? No.

The most interesting aspect of the film is the composition of poetry. Even then, the poetry is written, not rewritten or tumbling down blind alleys, so we don't get a full sense of the poet's mind at work. However, we do get glimmers of the poet's inspirations.

Someone somewhere will say that conflict is overrated. If so, why not stare at a waterfall or a still photograph? We humans deal with conflict daily--not that we crave it (well, at least not most of us), but that we have to find ways out of it. We have dreams. Things don't go as planned. We have loves, but other humans don't see the world/situation as we do.

In the film, we could have started closer to the conflict and examined the repercussions in his life. Surely, his loss will make him at least a little irritable, causing other problems.

The quotes below summarize the movie, and you might wonder if you're following the right character although there are some nice parallels and minor details of interest like the mailbox and twins. The trailer makes it look like it's a little more thrilling.

The movie is well rated on both IMDB (7.4) and Rotten Tomatoes (96%), so don't take my word for it (there might have been one time when my feeling about a movie matched Rotten Tomatoes over IMDB). Those numbers match my expectations--not a thrill but poetically inspiring (which it was) and intellectually stimulating and perhaps moving. I suspect that many love the low-keyness, the cinematography (Laura's designs are kind of cool), the idea of poetry as subject matter (includes Real PoetryTM!), and the lack of conflict. If you ask what's going on inside him, your answer might differ.

Quotes:

Donny: Ready to roll, Paterson?Paterson: Yeah. Everything okay?Donny: Well, now that you ask, No, not really. My kid needs braces on her teeth, my car needs a transmission job, my wife wants me to take her to Florida but I’m behind on the mortgage payments, my uncle called from India and he needs money for my niece’s wedding and I got this strange rash on my back. You name it, brother. How about you?Paterson: I’m okay.

Man in Low Rider: That’s an English bulldog, right? A dog like that get dog-jacked, majee.Paterson: Well, it gives me something to look forward to, I guess.

Doc [looking at the chessboard]: I got my ass kicked a bit.Paterson: Who are you playing?Doc: Myself.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

I’m interested in workshop the way you go to a place and make stuff. I’m trying to figure out how to make my classes — everything I teach — more like a lab or an experiment zone.

I’m trying to encourage weird accidents of the imagination. I’m trying to set up a classroom as a place where people can make really beautiful mistakes, and where collaboration is among the highest achievements. Radical collaboration, deep collaboration. I feel like something is happening to my work — I don’t know what it is, but something that I trust is good....

I’m so uninterested in proficiency, and I’m so uninterested in mastery.... I’m way more interested in people who are doing things they don’t know how to do.

Everything that I’m writing now I have no fucking idea how to write. I’m writing these little mini-essays. I’m writing a nonfiction book. And then I’m writing this very long poem, that is completely out of my league.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

[I]n the revision process[,] I’ll get a sort of feeling for what a poem’s going to be, and then I’ll go back into it and try to find cracks or openings where something might happen. It’s almost always the case that what feels really interesting to me about a poem arrives through the long and slow revision process — really sitting at points where I’m stuck in the poem or not telling the truth, and then finally, hopefully, arriving at the thing that opens the poem up to me. That actually is the moment... that transforms the poem into a thing that transforms me. Sometimes it’s a pronoun, literally — and it takes me months to figure it out.

I have a poem called “Glass” in my second book, and I was working on that poem almost daily for a couple months... I was doing things along the way — but what I needed to do was change a “they” to a “we,” and once that happened the poem materialized. I was banging my head into this poem so hard, and then that happened, and it felt like, oh my god, this is what I did not know until now.

The first [draft] feels like I’m being more verbose[.] I’m including is what’s available in my mind at the time, and that could feel sort of big and wild. The way that a revision might open up to include things is very different.

[T]hat “Spoon” poem... went through many drafts, and it took a couple years to write it. At first, that poem was... about a spoon. It ended in a sort of sweet, boring way. And then I broke it back open, and I realized there was more, and then I broke it open again, when I realized that I could not get to where I thought I was going to get. [T]hat was a turn in the poem where I got to understand something about my poetic process or my imaginative process, but also about this more complicated relationship with people who are no longer with me.

Thursday, January 4, 2018

The kids discover oranges with sparkly hair who speak like they're tough 1940s Hollywood gangsters. They have the secret to happiness. The youngest Outerscope kids don't trust the oranges so they plan to stand guard by the ship while the others go to find out about the secret to happiness. The promise to take the kids to the Yun-yun theater.

The set-up could shortened and less repetitious.

# 13

The Yun-yun theater stars none other than stinky... onions. They seem to be the butt of their own jokes. Clearly, the secret to happiness is laughing at someone else's expense. If you didn't get this, they reinforce it with a direct explanation. The oranges (or tree treats) subjugate the Yun-yuns and force them to tell jokes about themselves, so that oranges feel beautiful and powerful. No subtelty here.

# 14

The older kids thought the show was funny until they see Yun-yuns coerced to put on a show.

#15

The Outerscope kids want to turn the tables and make fun of the Tree Treats instead. The Outerscope kids play on the vanity of Tree Treats to make them pretend to be Yun-yuns and plan to put on a better show.

#16

The Yunyuns boo and laugh although some Yunyuns don't care for the turned tables. Meanwhile, the Tree Treats have learned their lesson about making fun of Yunyuns. They discover that either way is wrong. Celebration!

#17

If you didn't get the moral of the story the first time, they expound it again as they travel to another planet.

They hit a bouncy object but it is too dark to tell what they hit. Eleanor decides to go on a space walk without a space suit and has lots of fun. They have to talk her into investigating. What looked like a keyhole from the spaceship turns out to be...

a keyhole! Eleanor swims through space to look for a doorknob.

Am I exaggerating by calling this a science fantasy? They've dropped the ball on wondering to what extent if any they are living in reality.

To be continued...

It strikes me that these episodes are way to short to convey much. Due to their brevity, they had to make certain aspects redundant. If you could recut them to eliminate the pedantic aspects and redundancy they might retain some of the fondness and mystery of the brief glimpses I had as a child. I do like the "To be continued..." but maybe right before an episode where one ends on this kind of mysterious wonder. But until these get trimmed, they are rather tedious. I wonder how many episodes a kid would sit through. Certainly most adults might accidentally lose the disc before getting to the end.